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PayPal

Send Money, Pay Online or Set Up a Merchant Account
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What is PayPal?

PayPal is an online payments and money transfer service that allows you to send money via email, phone, text message or Skype. They offer products to both individuals and businesses alike, including online vendors, auction sites and corporate users. PayPal connects effortlessly to bank accounts and credit cards. PayPal Mobile is one of PayPal’s newest products. It allows you to send payments by text message or by using PayPal’s mobile browser.
PayPal is a tool in the Payment Services category of a tech stack.

Who uses PayPal?

Companies
2156 companies reportedly use PayPal in their tech stacks, including Uber, Udemy, and Delivery Hero.

Developers
16611 developers on StackShare have stated that they use PayPal.

PayPal Integrations

Shopify, Gravity Forms, PrestaShop, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, and Xero are some of the popular tools that integrate with PayPal. Here's a list of all 88 tools that integrate with PayPal.
Pros of PayPal
195
Most known service
135
Consumers know it
113
It's available for many countries
70
Easy
54
Best way to get paid outside US
35
Most widely used payment processor
25
Express Checkout
16
Consumers trust it
15
Flexible and secure
6
Digital Goods for Express Checkout
Decisions about PayPal

Here are some stack decisions, common use cases and reviews by companies and developers who chose PayPal in their tech stack.

Mohsine Ayane
Needs advice
on
DjangoDjango
and
PayPalPayPal

Hello, please how can I integrate PayPal in a Django website after the last update?

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Romel Lumiguid Jr.
Founder & CEO at Domain Sales History · | 4 upvotes · 32.3K views
Needs advice
on
PayPalPayPal
and
StripeStripe
at

Currently, I am using PayPal, and it's working fine somehow. My business is an online job board to hire remote workers. It was built on October 11, 2022. I got my first paying user just this week and that person paid through Paypal for a premium job listing worth $75. My target customers are from the US.

I'm currently based in the Philippines and Stripe payments are not yet working in my country. Any suggestions on alternatives so I can put credit card payments on my site?

My current website is OnlineJobsPH.com , please advise.

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Tim Little
Software Consultant at timlittletech · | 7 upvotes · 95.9K views
Needs advice
on
BraintreeBraintreePayWhirlPayWhirl
and
StripeStripe

Hi there, I am trying to figure out if it's worth creating a Braintree account to do subscription billing in my Shopify store. The goal is to have as little custom code as possible for the store but be able to do subscription billing services, we already have a PayPal business account, but from the looks of it, we can't use PayWhirl directly with Paypal.

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Team Showwcase
Product Team at Showwcase · | 6 upvotes · 57.1K views
Needs advice
on
PayPalPayPal
and
StripeStripe

Hi Folks,

I represent Showwcase, which is a network built for coders.

We're introducing a paywall for content creators on the platform to start accepting payments from their Followers for premium and unique content over and above the general free content. We are internally considering either Stripe or PayPal to handle this for us.

If we take the pricing out of the debate, what's the go-to choice when choosing which to integrate? Our current standpoint is that Paypal has wider consumer adoption, and since most creators are individuals, it makes sense to just use Paypal because they already have an account. However, our business uses Stripe, and so it makes it easier if both the platform (Showwcase) and creators to be on the Stripe platform. That being said, if creators don't already have an account, they will need to sign up with Stripe on the spot, which is a friction point.

I would like to hear the pros and cons in developer environments as well as any other things we might not know.

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Lucas Litton
Founder & CEO at Macombey · | 4 upvotes · 259.2K views

We use GoCardless to simplify the way clients and partners pay for our services. What intrigued us is the quick and easy ACH feature that gives our clients the option to log in with their bank account and shoot the funds directly to our account. The fee, compared to Stripe is less. Stripe and PayPal charge 2.9% + 30c and Stripe also forces the client to enter in all of their payment details manually and then if the payment doesn't work, the client has to try all over again. GoCardless charges 1% + 25c which is much more reasonable dealing with the large projects that we are currently working on.

We integrate GoCardless with Xero to easily send out quick invoices, receive the funds and track all revenue in one place.

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Needs advice
on
BraintreeBraintreeChargebeeChargebee
and
StripeStripe

Dear StackShare Community,

I am seeking inspiration on creating a billing & subscription stack and came across this wonderful website and community.

From what I understood so far, I need something like Stripe or Braintree to collect payments without dealing with PCI compliance or setting up merchant accounts, etc... Additionally, services like Chargebee, Recurly, Chargify, etc. are said to make life easier when dealing with recurring billing.

Stated below, I've tried to give you some context on what I want to achieve. I am very curious about your ideas and how you'd configure an optimal stack.

Project context (very high level):

  • Loyalty program for local merchants (stores, restaurants,...).

  • Customers support their community and merchants by shopping local.

  • Merchants grant points to customers based on a customer's value spent in a store, restaurant, etc.

  • Customers can redeem their points at any participating merchant.

Billing / Subscription scenarios to be considered:

(affecting merchants only)

One-time setup fee

  • What: Merchant pays a setup fee by signing up for the service

  • Where: Order placed on the website

Monthly retainer fee

  • What: Merchant pays a monthly recurring retainer for the service.

  • Where: Order placed on the website

Manually initiated payment

  • What: Merchant initiates a payment to top up his virtual points wallet. E.g. pays 100 USD to top up 100000 points which then can be used by the merchant for granting points to customers.

  • Why: Points issued to members need to be paid for by the merchant. We first considered billing the merchants post-ante, e.g. monthly based on the points they've granted to their customers in the last 30 days, but this seems too risky: If they can't / won't pay we'd still have to pay out points to the customers (technically to the merchants where the customers redeem their points). Thus, the pragmatic idea to reduce risk by having the merchants to pre-pay for their points by topping up their balance.

  • Where: Web application (with the merchant logged in)

  • Nice to have: Opt-in for automatically initiated top-ups if a merchant's balance falls below a certain amount.

Invoicing

  • What: After every transaction (setup, retainer, top-up,...), we need to automatically issue and send (E-Mail) an invoice to the merchant.

  • Nice to have: Customer portal with all their invoices.

Other potentially relevant parameters

  • Currency: Only Euro

  • Country: Only Germany (so far)

  • Tax: Only one tax rate

  • Payment for setup & retainer: Credit Card; ideally SEPA Direct Debit (but that still causes headache due to the SEPA regulatory and risk of chargebacks still after weeks), PayPal?

  • Payment for top-up: Same as above plus any other that makes sense (Klarna, Sofort, PayPal...)

Again, thank you very much for sharing your ideas and thoughts! I'd highly appreciate any input :-)

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PayPal's Features

  • 2.9% + $0.30 or less- With our flat, transparent pricing, you’ll never be surprised by hidden or variable fees. We also offer discounted rates when you sell a lot, or when you use our card reader.
  • Keeping every seller secure- If you’re sent an unauthorized payment, or a buyer claims they never received an item, our Seller Protection covers you for the full amount of the eligible payment.
  • Easy for them, easy for you- With just a few clicks, you can get paid by debit card, credit card, or a PayPal transfer. All someone needs to start buying from you is your e-mail address or mobile number.
  • Adaptive Payments- The Adaptive Payments API allows merchants and developers to pay almost anyone and set up automated payments.
  • Express Checkout- Express Checkout allows merchants and developers to minimize the number of steps customers must complete when they checkout.
  • PayPal Payments Advanced- PayPal Payments Advanced allows merchants to enable their online stores to collect payment directly via credit card or via PayPal Express Checkout.

PayPal Alternatives & Comparisons

What are some alternatives to PayPal?
Stripe
Stripe makes it easy for developers to accept credit cards on the web.
WePay
WePay helps people sell tickets to events, send invoices, sell items online, and accept donations online. WePay also provides an API that allows developers to access its payments platform.
Payoneer
It is a financial services company that provides online money transfer and digital payment services and working capital solutions
TransferWise
It bypasses pricey international payments entirely by using two local transfers instead of one international transaction. If you want to convert your pounds to euros, you send the money in pounds to its UK-based account.
Braintree
Braintree replaces traditional payment gateways and merchant accounts. From one touch payments, to mobile SDKs and international sales, we provide everything you need to start accepting payments today.
See all alternatives

PayPal's Followers
14265 developers follow PayPal to keep up with related blogs and decisions.